News Blog

COVID-19 has not only brought a new “normal” to every-day living, it has also made us rethink holidays and celebrations. A big challenge for many is how to handle the feelings of having a different kind of holiday season and missing out on seeing distant family members who they would normally visit.

“There’s no place like home for the holidays,” the classic tune says, and indeed, as we navigate the winter holiday season in the COVID-19 era, experts across the country have insisted that staying home is the best and safest option. That doesn’t make it sting less, though.

TV commercials, gift catalogues, storefront windows and those cinnamon-scented pinecones at the grocery store provide telltale signs that the holiday season is full swing. But as COVID-19 cases surge across the nation, the usual parties and celebrations with friends and family aren’t on the table.

Not too long ago, doctors’ poor handwriting was notorious and a staple for jokes. But now, most of the record-keeping in medicine has transitioned to digital means.

As key players in the COVID-19 pandemic response, contact tracers are people who call those who have recently been diagnosed with COVID-19 to in person over the recent days.

Jessica, a lab technician of Pathology at Penn Medicine, is prepping COVID-19 samples to test. Her first batch of the day includes almost 400 samples left from the night before when the lab closed at around 1:30 a.m., a handful of COVID-19 samples that need to be run again and a plate of 100 new specimens that have started arriving this morning.

I woke up at 3 a.m. and my throat was burning. Ordinarily, I’d rinse my nose with a neti pot, drink a cup of tea, and fall back asleep; I have allergies and am prone to sinus infections. But this was September 2020, and it seemed like every sniffle, rash, or pain could be a COVID-19 symptom.

“We realized things had to be a little different this year. We couldn’t do a full in-person orchestra,” said Andrea Jin, a second year medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine.

Between January 1, 2018 and July 18, 2020, 26,335 emergency room visits for opioid overdoses were recorded across Pennsylvania. In Chester County, 282 people died from opioid overdoses over roughly the same period.

Getting a good night’s rest can be difficult even under the best of circumstances. According to a 2018 study from Penn Medicine researchers, about a quarter of Americans experience acute insomnia each year.